SELF-DENIAL. What is self-denial? Is it sackcloth on the loins? Is it a wooden blook for a pillow? Is it pulse or lentil-pottage for the daily meal? Is it a crypt or kennel for one's lodging? Ah no! In all this flesh-pinching there is often a subtile self-pleasing: but when the temper is up to rule the spirit, and over a "manly revenge" to let Christian magnanimity triumphthat is self-denial. To take pains with dull children, and with ignorant and insipid adults

Posthumous Works of the Rev. Henry B. Bascom, D.D., LL.D., one of the Bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Edited by Rev. Thomas N. Ralston, A. M. Vol. II. (Stevenson & Owen, Nashville, Tenn.) This second volume of Dr. Bascom's works contains five lectures on the Relative Claims of Christianity and Infidelity; an Inaugural Address; two Baccalaureate Orations; a discourse on Temperance; a Glance at the Philosophy and History of Agriculture; a Brief Address on the Centenary of Methodism, and the "Claims of Africa ;" an address in behalf of the American Colonization Society, delivered at various places in the years 1832 and 1833. From this latter, which we remember to have heard the author deliver to a crowded congregation, we make a few extracts, fair specimens of the author's style, and containing sentiments which we hardly expected to see made public by the agents of a Southern publishing house at the present time. Alluding to the desperate bravery of the negro, he says:

"If this remark shall have excited a smile of contempt in any, let the bloody placers and sanguinary fields of St. Domingo tell our paper politicians what the negro can do, when roused to action and battle by the impulse of desperation! Let the troops of Napoleon, the world's imperial master, who were triumphantly vanquished by undisciplined negroes, say whether they can fight! If such a victory had been obtained over the forces of France by some nation of distinction, it would have been enrolled in the archives of the earth and the bureau of war as the humiliation of Bonaparte! But because, forsooth, it was done by slaves, we could hardly get anybody to print it!"

On the color of the African the orator waxes eloquent :

"It was once said that no good thing can come out of Nazareth and it is now thought that the mere color of the African places him under the general ban of nations, and renders preposterous and absurd the idea, that this race could ever have occupied a position of dignity, or contributed to the general advancement of the world. If external aspect (and the assumption admits of triumphant vindication) is considered a mere accident of being, how can it render nugatory all contravening evidence? If so, then reason is a cheat, and Bacon and Newton were sophists! Why the African is black, I know not, nor do I pause to inquire, any more than why you are white. One is as great a mys

tery to me as the other. It may be the effect of climate and condition; or, which is much more likely, it may be a merciful arrangement of Heaven and nature, to prepare them for residence and suffering in the hot intertropical regions assigned them as the bounds of their habitation. I do not profess to be an adept in the science of climatology, nor can I fathom the deep designs of Providence. I leave both to be comprehended and explained by others. But certainly, if the mere extrinsic circumstance, the adventitious adjunct of color, is to expel the African from the pale of humanity, of which we deem ourselves such fair specimens, the decision reflects but too injuriously upon the magnanimity of earth and the justice of Heaven! If more than a hundred millions of negroes are to be disfranchised of the rights of brotherhood in this way, what will you say of nearly five hundred millions of the copper colored, the olive, and the tawny, millions of whom resemble yourselves as little, and myriads less than the negro, and thousands of whom are as ugly and hateful to the eye of a polished European, as the impersonations of Scandinavian mythology? Will you reject these too? And suppose, on the other hand, that this overwhelming plurality of the great family of man, shall turn on the high pretenders, and expel them by way of recrimination? How is the question to be settled? The result of the whole is, that they possess all the essential distinguishing elements of our common nature-the physical and moral constitution of man."

Of what Africa has been in the past, we are told that

"She has poured forth her heroes on the field. Look at the mighty Shishak, the great Sesostris, the victorious Hannibal, before whose martial step the majesty of Rome trembled upon the Alpine battlements! She has given Bishops to the Church.' Ecclesiastical history enumerates seven hundred of them, that met in council in Africa to deliberate upon the fortunes of the Church of God. She has given 'her martyrs to the fire,' where they shouted the hopes of glory amid the flames that burned them up! And if this is not enough, let those who affect to think that negro physiognomy shuts out the light of intellect, visit the capital of the British empire, and there 'contemplate the features of the colossal head of Memnon, and the statues of the divinities on which the ancient Africans impressed their own forms, and see, in close resemblance to the negro feature, the mold of those countenances which once beheld, as the creations of their own immortal genius, the noblest and most stupendous monuments of human skill, and taste, and grandeur! In the imperishable porphyry and granite, is the unfounded and pitiful slander publicly, and before all the world, refuted!' Look at the world-astonishing coruscations of the genius of Africa, which so splendidly illustrated the morning of her bright and bold career! Her glory commences in the depths of a remote antiquity, and

holds the unbroken tenor of its way over the ruins of fifty generations, until we are presented with its consummation in the most polished of the three grand divisions of the ancient world! Africa has furnished her generals, physicians, philosophers, linguists, poets, mathematicians, and merchants, all eminent in their attainments, energetic in enterprise, and honorable in character. But I see the smile of disdain curling upon the lip of a pragmatic politician, and he points me to the intellect of modern Africa. This is a most unfortunate reference, and one that should crimson the national cheek with shame! What could be expected from the intellect of modern Africa, when it is known that despair, ages since, sat down upon the same throne with reason, and disputed for empire? Hushed has been the voice of hope and the dream of fame; and even memory, among her children, bought and sold, whipped and brutalized, lingered only to survey the desolation, and to let fall a tear over the mighty ruin, and tell them all was lost! Yet the celebrated Blumenbach, the father of German naturalists, has a large library, exclusively the production of negroes; and he affirms, proudly and fearlessly, that there is no branch of science or literature in which they have not excelled, have not distinguished themselves! And Gregoria, ex-bishop of Blois, in France, has a large glass case filled with the works of negro authors exclusively, to which he points with exulting pride, as a refutation of all that can be said against the mental claims of Africa. Read her history, and you will find it a thinking story! You will meet with the studious and the brave; the masters of arts and of arms, and the heroes of many a tale of danger and of glory. Even now, in her mysterious records and moldering greatness, Africa stands, like her own Egyptian Iris, dark and impenetrable, shrouded in the mystic drapery, which ages, long neglected, have let fall upon her gigantic wonders!"

The foreign slave-trade is denounced in terms of unmingled bitterness, and we suppose a man of Dr. Bascom's good sense could not fail to see that all his denunciation applied with even great

er force to the internal traffic in the bodies and souls of men. Wherein can it be worse to deal in native Africans, than to buy and sell Americans, born on the soil consecrated to freedom?

"The children of Africa have been the most unhappy of all the family of man. More oppressed, and more abused; I do not, I will not meddle with the question of domestic slavery, as sanctioned by law in this country. I speak of the oppression of Africa as a country -as a member of the great family of nations. I speak of the slave-trade, in all the extent and malignity of its hateful and hated visitations. And among all the national obliquities that the recording angel, in the councils of eternity, has ever reluctantly traced upon the damning page of Heaven's black register, is there any to equal this oppression? What can you think of the infernal man-stealer, the hell-incited kidnapper that would take by force, and drive a human horde from motives of sheer cupidity? Is he not an outlaw, alike from the reach of humanity and the mercy of Heaven! Is there a virtuous intelligence in God's universe, or even a devil in hell, that would not blush to claim kindred with him! Pardon me, my friends, I cannot disguise my feelings, sincerely, I cannot think of the woe-worn world of Africa, that once flourishing, but now desolate continent, without exclaiming, a thousand times accursed be the oppressor, that has withered the verdure of her banks and fields, and spread sterility over her soils! As the voice of God, conscience and duty cannot affect him, as he cannot be arrested by national or municipal law-as the claims of heaven, the fear of hell, and the interests of eternity, are recklessly blotted from his ledger of blood and murder, and he remains uninfluenced, even by the last hope of the depraved a sense of shame he deserves, and should receive at once the execration of his species! The indignant scorn, the unleavened, undying hate of humanity, should drive him out with the mule, to feed upon the thistle, and when he dies, the burial of an ass should give immortality to his infamy!"

An abolitionist, determined to trample under foot the Fugitive Slave Law, could hardly use stronger language than this:

"If you see your brother need, and close your bowels of compassion against him, the love of God is not in you. You might as well look for heaven and hell in embrace,

as to meet a man wantonly oppressing his brother, or refusing to assist him, possessed of the religion of Jesus Christ! What confidence can I have in the benevolence of a man, having it in his power to assist me, when misfortune entitles me to aid, and refusing to do so? Still less when, by acts of aggression, he proceeds to oppress me; and none at all when he seeks to deprive me of personal liberty. No! my soul is my self, and my body is my own! This compound of bone and muscle belongs to me, and he who would deprive me of it for purposes of gain, would do anything else for the same purpose that law and custom would seem to sanction. He would rifle the tomb of his father! he would light the graveyard thief, torch in hand, to the tomb of her that bore him! he would plunder the tree of life, and damn the nations by the sale of its fruit, if he could make money by it, and secure the gratification of his passions!"

Finally, we are told:

"It remains for you, therefore, to exert yourselves in wiping away the most defacing stain-that of slavery-that is seen lingering in the azure heaven of your country's reputation. I appeal to you in the name, and invoke you by the sanctity of the day and the occasion, lay not the flattering unction to your soul, that all is well! The volcano is sleeping, we know, but the fire is burning in its depths! Your altars are fuming with the offerings of liberty; your annual harangues glow with the scorn of servitude; every crowd you see is inflated with the boasted disdain of a master; but in the midst of all, the hated perpetual chain clanks the chorus of the song; and the eye rests but a moment upon the temple of liberty, until the ear catches the echoes of the groans and hot dungeon beneath!"

M. Colton, of Boston, has sent us The Hundred Dialogues, new and original, designed for reading and exhibition in Schools, Academies, and private Circles. By W. B. Fowle. If children must speak dialogues, and we suppose there is no help for it, seeing that even the Sunday schools have endorsed the practice, it will be of great advantage to teachers to have so good and unexceptionable a variety from which to make selections. So far as we have examined those in this volume, they appear well calculated for the object intended. The pieces are entirely original, and indicate great versatility and good judgment on the part of the author.

The School Harp; a Collection of pleasing and instructives Songs; Music and Words original and selected, designed for the use of Schools and Singing-classes. By E. H. Bascom. A neat little book, apparently well adapted to promote the important branch of education-too generally neglected the cultivation of the voice. It is accompanied by numerous testimonials from teachers and others who have had an opportunity to test its merits, who concur in the opinion that "It is just the thing." It is sold for twenty-five cents a copy. Published by Morris Colton, Boston.

A similar little volume, of equal merit, we omitted to mention at the time of its publication. It is entitled the Linden Harp, and was compiled by a lady who assumes, as her nom de plume, C. M. Thayer. It has already had a wide circulation.

of anecdote and gossip. Queen Victoria, we are told, "has exhibited, at times, indications of approaching insanity;" and "the Prince of Wales, they say, is weak in the upper story." In the author's opinion, to which he has a perfect right, seeing he is himself an Englishman, these are matters of little consequence, for "royalty in Europe must sooner or later die out;" and as to England, we are assured that "she must be republican ere long." The letters were not written with the design of making a book, but in this form will find many additional readers.

The Wesleyan Psalter: a Poetical Version of nearly the whole Book of Psalms. By the Rev. Charles Wesley. Versions of some of the Psalms, by the Rev. S. Wesley, Sen., the Rev. S. Wesley, Jun., and the Rev. J. Wesley; and Lists of Versions by various authors; with an Introductory Essay, by Henry Fish, A. M. Edited by Thomas O. Summers, D.D. (Nashville, Tenn.: Stevenson & Owen.) This neat little volume contains many poetic gems, which are now for the first time made public. They were copied from a manuscript of Charles Wesley's, which, it seems, was once in possession of the Countess of Huntington, and accidentally fell into the hands of Mr. Fish. Dr. Summers, assisted by David Cremer, Esq., of Baltimore, has carefully revised Mr. Fish's volume, and added all the versifications of the Psalms of David which are known to have been written by the Wesleys. It is something more than a "recension," as the American editor calls it, unless, indeed, he uses that word in a sense as yet unauthorized. It is, in fact, a complete Wesleyan Psalter; and although the poetry is of very unequal merit, and some of it was hardly worth printing, there are portions which are equal to anything of the kind in the language. We make a few extracts, which will be new to most of our readers. For the peculiarity of the meter, as well as fidelity to the sentiment of Psalm xiv, 7, take the following:

"O that all the mournful nation
Might, with me, taste and see
Jesus's salvation!

"O that all who would rely on
Jesus' love, now might prove

Safety is in Sion!

"Jesus from our sins shall save us,
He shall soon claim his own,

He who bought will have us.

"When he frees our souls from prison,

Love and joy shall employ

All the Gospel season.

"As a wide-extended river,
Israel's peace shall increase,
Flow, and flow forever."

Several stanzas, in the versification of Psalm xviii, are in the author's happiest vein-faultless in rhythm and evangelical in sentiment:

"The Lord from heaven in thunder spoke:
The Lord most terrible, most high,
Sent forth his mighty voice, and shook
The battlements of earth and sky:
His wrath in storms of hail he show'd,
As burning coals his judgments glow'd.

"He sent his warrant from above,

And claim'd, and seized my soul for his:
He drew me by the cords of love,

Implunged in sin's profound abyss:
Redeem'd me from the tempter's power,
Nor let my stronger foes devour.

"Wherefore I will exalt thy Name,

And teach the heathen world thy praise:
In songs of sacred joy proclaim

Thy riches of redeeming grace,
Till all the heathen world confess

And hymn the Lord our Righteousness."

David's ejaculation and prayer, "Who can understand his errors? Cleanse thou me from secret faults," is thus versified :

"O, if our thoughts in heaven are heard—
Ere form'd, if our desires are known-
If ill committed, good deferr'd,

Are obvious to the Holy One-
How oft we err, how oft offend,
Can we, e'en faintly, comprehend?
"Whate'er we think, or do, or say,

To build on proves a sandy ground;
And must be, in the trying day,

(Weigh'd in the balance,) wanting found.
By thy soul-purifying blood,

Cleanse me from unknown faults-my God!"

The sentiment that our thoughts are heard in heaven, is highly poetical and profoundly true. Three verses of Psalm xx, 7-9, are given in a favorite Moravian meter, which we were not aware that Charles Wesley had ever attempted: "Some put their trust in chariots, And horses some rely on:

But God alone

Our help we own:
God is the strength of Sion.

"His Name we will remember
In every sore temptation,
And feel its powers;
For Christ is ours,
With all his great salvation.

"We are his ransom'd people,
And he that bought will have us!
Secure from harm

While Jesus' arm

Is still stretch'd out to save us.

"He out of all our troubles Shall mightily deliver,

And then receive

Us up to live

And reign with him forever.

The very spirit of the Psalmist's question and answer (Psa. cxvi, 12, 13) is felt in the following:

"O what shall I say?
What recompense pay
To the giver of all I possess?
I will gladly receive,
While he offers to give,
His unsearchable riches of grace.

"I will call on his name,
And with singing proclaim
The perfection of Jesus's love:
I will drink the full cup,
Till he beckons me up,

To enjoy his salvation above."

From the versification of Psalm cxxii, the editor omits two stanzas, "as inappropriate to American Christians." The book not having been prepared for the use of congregations in public singing, it would have been, perhaps, as modest to have given us the verses, and left them to the judgment of "American Christians," unless, indeed, they were of an incendiary character. The prayer for the peace of Jerusalem is neat and epigrammatic:

"With all my heart, O Lord, I pray

For our Jerusalem:

The promise with thy Church to stayIn her behalf I claim.

possessor of the complete manuscript of Schiller's Correspondence with Körner, and whose interesting album of autographs we had occasion to mention some time ago.

M. Vattemare, of Paris, reports that an appropriation has been made by government for the American Library in that city; that it now comprises over five thousand volumes; and requests American publishers to favor it with their new publications as issued.

The Hon. George P. Marsh, of Vermont, lately United States Minister at Constantinople, has in press, at Boston, a work on the Camel, which promises to be of great utility in view of the approaching introduction of that animal into this country.

The lost history of "Plymouth Colony," by Bradford, recently discovered in England, primarily through the researches of the Rev. Mr. Barry, and prepared for the press by Charles Deane, has been published by the Massachusetts Historical Society.

A very interesting discovery has lately been made at Mayence, which throws additional light upon the early introduction of the art of printing with metal types in that city. In digging in the interior area of a house, situate "Zum Gutenberg's Platz, (so named from its being well ascertained that John Guttenberg's earliest printing-office was situate there,) the laborers employed in the excavation turned a post, evidently a portion of a printing-press, on which were marked, in Gothic characters, the letters, J. G., and the numerals MCDXLI., signifying 1441, in a rather unusual mode of using the Latin letters, the C standing before the D being to be deducted like the following X before the L.

Under the title of "Ma Bibliothèque Française," a little volume has been prepared, at the instance of Mr. Stevens, the literary agent in England of the Smithsonian Institute, by M. Hector Bossange, for the use of American librarians and collectors. It is prepared on a good plan, and executed with the care which distinguished Mr. Stevens's little work, "My English Library." M. Bossange, however, adds some slight biographical as well as bibliographical notes to his lists; so that the man is made known to the purchaser of his books.

The Persian poet, Núruddin Abdurrahman, generally known by his poetical name, Jámi, from the town of Jám, in Khorasan, which gave him birth, is said by writers on Oriental literature, to have been a most voluminous author. With the exception of his "Yusuf and Zulaika," few of his works are known even by name in Western Europe. Portions of an allegorical poem, Salámán and Absál, said to have enjoyed great reputation for nearly four centuries in the East, have been translated, the rhyming couplets of the original being rendered in blank verse, and are shortly to be published.

nently before the public, in connection with the alleged libels in Dr. Vehse's history of the German courts, of which a translation has been published, has made arrangements with Dr. Christiani, of Hanover, a relation of Heine, to edit the work, and to undertake the necessary abbreviations and omissions. Heine in his will forbids the removal of his body from France to Germany.

The library of the late Professor Hermann, of Göttingen, the renowned philologist, has been purchased by the University of Prague. It consists of eleven thousand volumes, of which four thousand are pamphlets.

Some rare impressions of early quarto and folio editions of Shakspeare were sold last month in London. A copy of the first folio, 1623, bound by Kalthoeber, brought £66; of the second folio,

1632, £13; and of the third folio, 1664, £14 58. Among the early quarto editions of single plays, a fine copy of "The most excellent and Lamentable Tragedie of Romeo and Juliet, as it hath beene sundrie times publickly acted," sold for £23; "History of Henrie the Fourth with the battell at Shrewsburie, &c., with the humorous conceits of Sir John Falstaffe," second edition, 1599, £21 108.; "The Second Part of Henrie the Fourth," &c., first edition, 1600, £18; and "The Excellent History of the Merchant of Venice, with the extreme cruelty of Shylocke the Jew toward the said Merchant," &c., second edition, 1600, £17.

The University of Göttingen has just suffered a severe loss of the natural historian, Professor Meier, whose death took place at the ripe age of seventy-six, being born in 1782. His first work of note was a "Flora Hanoveriana," since which his contributions to various periodicals, on the subject of natural history, his favorite science, have been frequent and instructive.

Bayard Taylor is engaged in preparing a Cyclopaedia of Modern Travel. It will comprise the voyages, explorations, and adventures of more than fifty celebrated travelers of the half century between Humboldt's journeys to the equinoctial regions and Dr. Barth's return from Timbuctoo. The mass of information contained in many of their works, though of great value and interest in every point of view, has never yet been made accessible to readers of the English language. The work will contain about eight hundred octavo pages, and will be sold by subscription only.

The Life and Explorations of John C. Fremont. -Colonel Fremont, one of the most adventurous spirits that has appeared in our time, some months ago placed in the hands of an eminent writer the papers containing his own remarkable personal narrative. His romantic history is to be illustrated from scenes taken in daguerreotype by himself while on his great expeditions.